Think Small

Mother Teresa, the saint of Calcutta, was fond of saying, "We can do no great things, only small things with great love." Mother, no doubt, had a bit of the trickster in her...for she knew better than most that when you do something with great love, it ceases to be small. Love is eternal, and it infuses everything it touches with Eternity. Can't get much bigger than that.

Her challenge, historically known as the "little way," is a great one for all of us as we face the New Year. I believe that people too often think that anything less than finding a cure for cancer, or solving the economic crisis, or donating a ton of money to some well-deserving non-profit organization is not significant enough to tilt the world. But the reality is that when you love another, you move yourself and that person toward Heaven. BIG tilt. Honest to God.

Start with yourself and those closest to you, and work your way outward from the center. What little things can you do today, right now: offer a smile? an affirming word? a quick prayer? a menial task done without being asked? a "love letter" on a post-it? some minor sacrifice for another that stretches you a bit?

Resist the temptation to think that "little acts of love" don't matter, and strive for consistency. Resist the temptation to get perfectionistic about your actions, and move in freedom. Resist the temptation to need someone/anyone/everyone to notice how loving you're being. This plan is good for you, naturally and supernaturally. And the fact that God notices and is pleased is a pretty good reason to be at peace also!

Everyday, make a decision to do little things with great love...or as much love as you can muster up. And the world will become a better place. Happy New Year...think small!

Careful Where You Dig

A couple of summers ago King Tutankhamen visited our city again. It had been over twenty years since the boy king, who died in 1339 B.C., was on tour along with artifacts from his tomb. As impressive as the exhibit was, though, I found the story of his discovery as interesting as the treasures that lay inside his almost perfectly in tact final resting place. Howard Carter, the English archaeologist who found Tut’s tomb, had searched carefully, persistently, purposefully for ten years in the blazing Egyptian desert. And when he finally found the entrance to the tomb, almost accidentally, the work was still not finished. Locating a treasure is not worth very much if you destroy it in the unearthing process. So, Carter and his team ever so gently, almost reverently, explored the interior of the tomb, and the person that lay within, foot by foot, observing, studying, learning with great respect. After ten years of searching, you can imagine how much Carter might have been tempted to rush, to hurry, to take control of his find and exploit it for personal gain. But he maintained a remarkably unhurried and cautious pace, not wanting to damage in any way such a precious find. The process was more important to him than any individual agenda. Howard Carter’s approach to King Tut and his world serves as an apt analogy for how spouses should explore their partners’ respective pasts. In relationships, we must be careful when digging…archaeology with a heart!
Wanting to explore the mystery of your beloved, spiritually, emotionally, and physically, is an essential part of intimacy. If you’re not curious about how your partner has become the person he or she is, there’s a problem. After all, how else can you learn how to love him or her more and more fully. In order to make discoveries, we must do some digging into the past; not everything lies on the surface. There are great treasures that lie buried in history, but we must proceed with great care and gentleness.
A few guidelines for this “archaeological process” are sure to help your “dig” remain helpful and not harmful.
First, be clear about your motivation. Why are you asking the questions you’re asking? Is it to know your partner more fully so that you can love him or her more completely? Is it that you want your spouse to feel cared for, attended to, celebrated? Or, is your agenda less about love and more about control? Are you attempting to gain the upper hand in an argument, shame or guilt your partner into a subordinate role, make yourself feel significant.
Second, keep in mind that prior relationships, prior choices (both good and bad), prior experiences must be understood within the contexts they happened. A huge mistake would be to judge your spouse for something that happened years ago, with no respect for time, place, or culture. This would be a little like Howard Carter criticizing King Tut for his burial attire, or the way his tomb was organized. Reality check: ask yourself if you and your world have changed at all since you were in high school or early adulthood. Have you learned anything new about life and love, responsibility and freedom since you were 18 or 21 years old...or even since last year? My hopeful guess is that you have.
Finally, there must be freedom to share what one is comfortable sharing…and permission to say “I’m not ready to go there” or “not now” if the questions begin to feel uncomfortable, or the tone of the discussion begins to feel less like intimacy and more like an inquisition. If this occurs, put the breaks on and figure out what the emotional discomfort is about. It might be related to the here-and-now, the style or tone of the conversation, but it may also be linked to pain from the past that has not been fully healed. If the latter is the case, consider red-flagging the issue and revisiting it individually and/or as a couple with a trained third party (i.e. a counselor). Remember, discovering a treasure is wasted if, in the handling, we destroy it.

Holy Days

Holidays. What are some of the words that immediately come to mind? Vacation? Family? Shopping? Food? How about holiness? Honestly, holiness would not have been the first word that came to my mind either. Yet, essentially, that is what the holidays are about.
The word holiday comes from the Old English halig daeg, or holy day. Holy Days have traditionally been days in which children of God, whatever their religious tradition might be, are asked to be particularly aware of God's universal call to be holy. Holiness is a journey toward the good, toward transformation, toward Heaven, and in both the Hebrew and Greek language, holiness has two aspects to it: separation and union.
First, we are called to be separate from the world of darkness, where one lives a selfish, confused, ultimately directionless life, apart from God. Then, we are called to an ever-deepening relationship with the God of Love, His will for our lives, and His hope for the world He loves beyond words.
Unfortunately, holiness has not appeared to be a very attractive calling. Holiness has mistakenly been associated with words like judgemental, condescending, and escapist. "Holy rollers" and "holier than thou" attitudes give many the sense that "holiness" is about rules, perfectionism, and a lack of concern for those who are "outsiders." No wonder so many have trouble with the word holy.
Holiness is so much easier to recognize than it is to describe.
While I was in seminary, Jenni and I lived next door to a Chinese-American family. Our first week as neighbors, the Yens invited us over for dinner and when "Grandma" found out that I was a seminarian she asked me privately, in her best English, if I might do her a favor. Would I read her favorite Bible verses into her tape recorder so that she could listen to them in her free time?
Why did this 80 year-old woman make such a request? Was she practicing her English? No. Was she trying to look more "Biblical" in the eyes of her family and friends? No. Did she appear unbalanced, rigid, compulsive? Hardly. Her mind was sharp, her manner was joyful, and her eyes were filled with charity. I told her I would gladly do this for her, but awkwardly asked her why. She explained that she didn't speak or read English well, and her church was Chinese-speaking. She wanted to listen to her favorite verses in English because it was not nearly as familiar to her as her native Mandarin. Thus, she would have to listen "very closely."
Oh how different this world would be if more people listened “very closely” to the gentle urging of God…to be loving, truthful, gentle, kind, generous, and self-sacrificing.
Grandma gave me a wonderful example of what holiness really is, and I remember her in a special way this holiday season; this season of holy days. She now hears God's voice most clearly, and sings with the choirs of Heaven. May we hear those choirs of saints and angels during this season of miracles, and recognize in a new way how close God is to us throughout the year.
Let’s remember what this season of holiness is really all about….new beginnings, transformation, and hope! Let’s take inspiration and put it into action, re-commit ourselves to personal growth and healing, and bring light to our hurting world.

The Season of Hope

The Holiday Season is upon us, an “official” time of celebration of things foundational and eternal, but also a time of waiting! I think of this as the Season of Hope. Hope, the little sister of Faith and Love, is such a beautiful virtue, so essential to healing and wholeness...and of course at the very heart of our Stillpoint mission.
Symbols of this “thing with feathers” (as Emily Dickinson put it), Hope, are embedded throughout Sacred Scripture: the birth of Israel, manna in the wilderness, The Cloud by day and the Pillar of Fire at night, the Promised Land of Canaan, a Baby in a manger, an empty tomb, Bread and Wine, the New Jerusalem, and the perseverance of the saints just to name a few. And what we know deep in our hearts is that Hope is like a torch, chasing away the darkness and enabling us to see what lies ahead: Providence….God’s care. Because He wants us to grow in faith and dependence on Him, though, God doesn’t usually show us the details of the future. Don’t you wish He did? But then we wouldn’t ever grow up, and we need to grow up in order to love and change the world. However, God does send consolations to help us hang in there and trust that good is coming, and often these consolations take human form.
My first year of graduate school I worked three different jobs, one of which was selling programs at Dodger Stadium. Nothing wrong with this job, except that it was the same one I had when I was sixteen. And now at twenty-four I wanted something more “professional.” But the money was surprisingly good, and the work fit with my schedule, so I suited up and showed up. My stand was directly facing the skyscrapers of downtown, and occasionally people I knew from high school or college would pass me on the way in to the game, dressed in business attire and looking very successful. The surprised expressions on their faces told me they weren’t exactly sure what I was doing with myself, and I usually didn’t have the opportunity to explain. I felt like I was a lifetime away from my dream. One night, as the crowds streamed in, and I was busily trying to look busy, I heard someone yell, “Hey, Doctor Porter.” Without thinking about the fact that I was still six years away from earning that title, I turned to see a teacher from my high school coming toward me with a big grin on his face. I was in the middle of Finals and was exhausted, so the emotions surfaced quickly. All I could get out was a quiet, “Thank you.” He gave me a hug and added, “I thought maybe you needed to hear that.” Blessed are the messengers of hope.
In this Season of Hope, I want to thank you on behalf of Stillpoint Family Resources for being a messenger of hope, by helping us extend hope to those in need: to the person fighting a drug addiction, a couple struggling to stay married, a suicidal teen, or the single mom who has just heard the news that she’s carrying a special needs child. Because of all the ways you give to Stillpoint, through prayer, through service, and through financial support, we are able to serve as messengers of hope to over 150 families in nine different locations throughout Ventura, Los Angeles, and Orange Counties every week. We thank you for standing with us, and we humbly ask that you continue to help us in any way you can.
I wish you a blessed Season of Hope, and a New Year full of meaning and purpose!

November 2nd (All Soul's Day)

As sycamore leaves fall,
and roses start their final bloom,
we make our yearly pilgrimage
to this most human garden,
careful steps, questioning hearts.
The air is crisp, and puffs of smoke accompany the prayers we sow
like incense at the altar.
A hundred marble altars and more
beckon us draw near and fall;
petitioners we are
now on our knees the grass, dull brown,
resisting,
testing our resolve
in this harvest season.

What harvest this?
This garden gives by taking, purifying
intention and memory,
parsing what was and might have been.
Look for color, consolation, cure.
The cornucopia waits at home,
near the warm hearth and the crackling fire,
but is not here.
Leave expectation and desire at the iron gate, and wait.
The liquidambars on the hill aflame, red orange glow
like candles in a sanctuary holding back the night,
but the light
is for illumination,
not for heat.

Why are we here? What do we fear?
We walk among the rows,
processing in a clerical style and nodding
to each other reverentially
as if we know.
We read the litany of names as the angelus rings
and a nightingale sings.
Why are we here? What do we hear?
Late it is, but not too late.
This place is for the living not the dead.

Generational Healing

This growth I’ve been writing of is not just a process of healing for our families and for us in the here-and-now. The work we do with God, the hoping, struggling, trusting, and waiting, will bless generations that will come after us. Our grandchildren will be less fearful and more free because of our efforts, anointed by God. They will build on our growth, just as we’ve benefited from those who have gone before us. As I reflect on this truth, I think of my grandfather Wesley Hugh Gates, who grew up on a poor, little farm in Oklahoma.

Early one morning when he was about five years old, hammering in his home awakened him. So, my grandfather took his little brother by the hand, and together they walked into the kitchen to find their father building a coffin. My grandfather’s fifteen year-old sister had died in the middle of the night. She had been sick with the measles, and in her weakened condition an infection slipped in and claimed her body: this was the explanation my grandfather would hear years later from her doctor. But not from his family: he heard silence from them. His parents decided that the best way to deal with the tremendous loss was to not talk about it. And they never did. The young woman was buried in an unmarked grave, and that was that.

Of course, my grandfather never stopped feeling the loss of his sister. And through his grief, he chose to live differently. In his twenties, he even returned to look for her grave, somehow found it by sorting through cemetery records, and gave her a tombstone. As a father, he taught my mother that sadness didn’t have to be buried, and talking about feelings was healthy and good. Over the years, a pattern of hiding was dismantled, and in its place healing grew. And here I am, a clinical psychologist who helps others grieve and mourn daily: just two generations removed from that little farm in Oklahoma, and that dusty graveyard where a fifteen year old girl was quietly laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

Healing across generations is moving beyond words, and I have the honor of witnessing it daily in my work: clients who are deciding to live differently, facing great pain with even greater truth and love, and blessing future generations in the process. I see “Dan”, who sought and found sobriety from alcohol and drugs, and in the process broke an addiction cycle of violence and chaos that goes back at least five generations. I see “Joan”, who courageously faced the traumas of physical and sexual abuse from her childhood, and is now practicing intimacy differently with her family members. And I see “Jack”, who can be a spiritual father to dozens of young men because he was able to come to terms with the woundedness of his own father, and forgive him.

Healing and growth in the here-and-now blesses future generations, always has and always will. Brokenness does not have to have the final say. If we cooperate with Him in truth and love, God will redeem the lost years in miraculous ways. Where do you want healing to happen in your family, and what can you do today to start that process?

Lessons from the Waiting Room: The Gift of Presence

Pain, whether emotional or physical in form, has an insidious way of separating us from our support systems, from the core relationships in our lives who give us hope and stability. Like a boat cut away from its moorings, we are apt to drift in our pain, away from the safe harbor of community, away from those who help us bear our burdens, away from a sense of the familiar and normal.

People in pain are not easy to be around, and so our drifting…our isolating…can often be compounded by the reality that some will not want to be around us when we are hurting. Our hurting reminds them that they too hurt, or will hurt…and that’s too much reality for some. But the core relationships in our lives are core precisely because they love us in our pain. They are not afraid of our woundedness, our weakness, our unhappiness, our humanness.

Jen and I spent a lot of days and nights in waiting rooms over the first two years of John-John’s life, waiting to hear news from a doctor or a surgical nurse about the progress or outcome of a surgery or a procedure: “Your son is being prepped right now”, “John Michael’s vitals look good”, “he did just fine”, “we were able to accomplish most of what we’d hoped to do.” The updates were usually very brief, as were the post surgery narratives. Doctors and nurses realize that parents can only take in so much information at times like this, so they keep things very simple.

But waiting for news….often, it felt like days passed before any update would trickle out to the waiting room. And it was during these times that our loved ones would prove invaluable.

During those long days and nights in West Hills/Humana and Cedars-Sinai Hospitals, how did our loved ones most effectively care for us? By being with us. Yes, they did things for us also….cooking us meals, running errands for us, returning phone calls for us, and this was all appreciated. But in the end what mattered most was how they were present to us, particularly in the waiting room.

I think of this when people tell me that they couldn’t visit a friend who was depressed, or who had just suffered a loss, or was struggling with a health issue because they didn't know what to say. Words can be overrated. Showing up, bracketing your anxiety, and being present to one in pain says everything that needs to be said.

I can remember very few words that were spoken to encourage and inspire us during John Michael’s surgeries and recoveries, although many were offered. However, I will never forget snapshots from the waiting room of people being with us: my father reading his newspaper, my sisters and mother drinking coffee, my friend Wendy reading her novel, and my friend Paul praying his rosary. Simple pictures, dozens of them, that comfort me even today. Nothing earth shattering, nothing out of the ordinary; activities that could have been done anywhere in the city, and people wouldn’t have looked twice. But that’s the point. They were doing these common activities while being with us, attuned to us, ready to serve if called upon but not feeling the need to force activity and words on us. It was enough to know they were there; we didn’t need them to do anything else. It was such a personal time, so private and filled with emotion that more would have been less.

Our loved ones were not going to let us drift in our pain. They were not going to allow us to isolate. They kept guard like sentinels, reminding us that we were protected and not alone…we had not been abandoned and forsaken in our hour of great need. They formed the face of God for Jenni and me. Looking back, I see that the waiting room had gently and mystically been transformed into a sanctuary…a safe place for the weary and frightened to rest and find God.
Having others with me in my pain and anxiety didn’t lessen the suffering, but their presence did place my suffering in the larger context of Love, and remind me again that He always provides a harbor in the midst of the storm.

Who in your life needs this gift of presence…your presence? Don’t worry about finding the right words. Your willingness to “suit up and show up” will say enough.